It is hard to be hard on the final part of David Glass's The Lost Child Trilogy. Its heart is so obviously in the right place, and it offers some of the most exhilarating images currently to be seen on the stage. It is potentially so close to the kind of theatre that you dream of, its failure is all the more acute.
The Red Thread consists of 1998's The Hansel Gretel Machine and 1999's The Lost Child, woven together with a newly composed requiem. The trouble is, the strengths of the first piece and the weaknesses of the second are magnified when seen side by side and the music, although beautiful, adds little except a sense of lamentation.
The first part works best, largely because the Hansel and Gretel story is familiar to us all. Exquisite though it is to look at, I'd defy anyone to have a clue what was going on in the second half without recourse to the synopsis in the programme. Glass and his ensemble have filtered the stories of children from all over the world who have lost their childhoods through war, poverty, abuse, through such a dreamy filter that the experience seems remote from the real world.
Glass spent three years working with children around the world and hearing their stories, but you wouldn't know it. There is no analysis, no sense of the political, social and economic factors that contribute to the plight of children, no sense that they own this piece. Or indeed that adults can do anything other than weep and wring our hands. The piece makes you feel helpless in every sense.
But if the emphasis on a subconscious journey into the inner child of the adult rather sells today's lost children short, it does give rise to some stunning imagery. The first picture of Gretel suspended as though in the womb but also like a small child on a meat hook, sets the standard for an evening of undoubted visual flair.
Until April 1. Box office: 0171-928 6363.
